The Sunday Painter

About the Gallery
Harry Beer and Will Jarvis established The Sunday Painter in 2009 as an artist-run project space to show the work of their friends and peers. Conceived while the founders were art students at the Chelsea College of Arts and the Camberwell College of Arts, the gallery was originally located in a disused function room of a local pub in Peckham. In 2013, The Sunday Painter found a permanent space and transitioned to a commercial gallery model, representing and exhibiting the work of emerging and mid-career artists from the UK and abroad, including Leo Fitzmaurice, Rob Chavasse, Piotr Łakomy, and Samara Scott. In 2017, the gallery moved to its current space in Vauxhall, opening with gallery artist Cynthia Daignault’s first UK solo exhibition. The gallery’s origins are reflected in its commitment to running an artist-first space and cultivating a program that continually confronts, questions, and evolves with itself and the world around it.

About the Presentation
The Sunday Painter is pleased to present works by Emma Hart, Zearo, and Tomas Harker at Independent.

Existing on the fringes of popular culture, Tomas Harker's (b. 1990, Worksop UK, lives and works in London) practice often draws from a variety of image production and distribution systems in an attempt to make sense of a cosmic order becoming increasingly disordered. Harker's paintings capture the murkiness of modern life with a unique visual language, investigating the power dynamics that thrive on uncertainty. Despite engaging with complex social and systemic issues, his work maintains a surprising lightness—an irreverent touch softened by mythical aesthetic elements that invite deeper contemplation.

Emma Hart (b.1974, London, UK, lives and works in London, UK) uses her ceramic sculptures to perform, play out and question the power dynamics that structure a class-based society. Hart probes how our social background is transmitted through verbal signals and physical gestures, especially speech. Going beyond making vessels or pots, Hart’s risky approach to working with ceramics pushes the technical limits of clay, setting it to make ‘situations’ in which the viewer finds themselves centre stage. Starting with the idea of manipulating ‘signs’ such as pointing fingers, speech bubbles and targets, Hart produces imposing sculptures that tell you where to look, where to go and forcibly put words into your mouth that may not form part of your own vocabulary.

Zearo’s (b. 1996 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) practice is firmly rooted in an autobiographical perspective shaped by his South-East Asian heritage. Addressing themes of longing, desire, memory, and masculinity, Zearo creates deeply contemplative narratives that delve into the nuanced dimensions of same-sex relationships and psychological spaces. Employing a distinctly queer lens, Zearo’s works challenge the conventional norms of the male gaze, often by portraying male figures in a myriad of cognitive states.